Amazon and iRobot said regulatory concerns made it impossible for the deal to move forward, sending the Roomba makers' shares plummeting.

Amazon terminates iRobot deal, Roomba maker to lay off 31% of staff::Amazon and iRobot said regulatory concerns made it impossible for the deal to move forward, sending the Roomba makers’ shares plummeting.

  • tenextrathrills@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    1172·
    10 months ago

    If it’s any consolation those people would have been laid off no matter what happened. That’s how we do things now apparently

    • Copernican@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      10 months ago

      iRobot said it would focus on margin improvements, reduce spending on research and development, and pause all work on “non-floorcare” products, including its air purifiers and robotic lawn mowers.

      I doubt it. If you are stopping r&d and killing whole product lines, it makes sense to lay off the teams directly tied to those product lines. I’m guessing they needed Amazon to help them break into the market for areas outside of floor vacuums?

      • tenextrathrills@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        9·
        10 months ago

        Call me a skeptic but I’d be willing to bet small amounts of money that Amazon would absolutely lay some or all of these people off after the initial onboarding.

        • EmergMemeHologram@startrek.websiteEnglish
          3·
          10 months ago

          Fold home automation IP into Alexa brand, keep iRobot vacuum brand but increase data exfiltration, and put ads on all searches to increase sales, layoff the scrubs R&D team would be the natural playbook.

        • Copernican@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          It really depends on redundancy. Does Amazon have people that can do what iRobot staff does. For operational or sales teams maybe. If Amazon becomes the only store where you can buy a roomba, you probably lay off folks responsible for wholesale. That probably also means you lay off some marketing. But the core people that make the stuff probably have less redundancy. These layoffs are probably impacting the people that actually make and design the stuff, since they no longer or going to make all the stuff they planned. The hypothetical layoffs for acquisition would probably be smaller and impact different people at the company. And because it’s an acquisition, there may have been negotiated more favorable severance terms,

      • Clent@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        They should definitely dump air purifiers. What does that have to do with robotics?

        Lawn mowers however seem like a stupid drop, since a lawn is floor adjacent and the market in them is growing.

    • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      8·
      10 months ago

      Gotta artificially drive the cost of labor down somehow. All those poor folk started getting some wild ideas that they were worth something…

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      iRobot had been struggling over the past few years, and now capital is expensive. They were either going to need to sell or cut back in order to right the ship.

    • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      They fired their whole education wing when my startup was just starting to work with them (15 or something years ago). No warning just a month after starting a new project (early stem outreach type program), fired them all.

      So I don’t feel bad for iRobot. Sucks for the employees though.

    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldEnglish
      172·
      10 months ago

      I don’t know if this actually good for Roomba users. Selling to Amazon, and maintaining the status quo are both bad for the user.

      This isn’t a healthy company. It’s a busted company that Amazon was looking to salvage or rehabilitate.

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.caEnglish
        261·
        10 months ago

        Is it a busted company? I quickly found data for 2009-2022 and they’ve registered profit for every year till 2022 when they had their first loss. They’ve been around since the 90s.

        • Patches@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          152·
          10 months ago

          every year till 2022 when they had their first loss

          Numbers must always go up. Never down.

          Especially when interest rates quadrupled.

    • ElusiveClarity@lemmy.worldEnglish
      581·
      10 months ago

      Save yourself the headache and get something that works locally and doesn’t rely on their cloud and app.

      • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
        16·
        10 months ago

        True story. I hate all those cloud devices, which can run perfectly locally. And doesn’t require a subscription. I even see it back in cars nowadays, stupid subscriptions.

      • thisfro@slrpnk.netEnglish
        14·
        10 months ago

        What options are there out of the box? I only know of hacking well known brands and use something like valetudo

        • ElusiveClarity@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          I didn’t realize that so I just went to check on mine and the integration is errored out lol. A quick look on the forums shows that multiple people are having the same issue. When mine was working, I only had a few options like start and go home so it wasn’t that helpful anyways. The roomba app did update with room mapping abilities but I was never able to get that information into home assistant so my only option was a full clean. Maybe it’s changed since mine stopped working but I can’t wait to get something that’s better supported and put this one upstairs where it only has a few rooms to clean.

      • june@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        10 months ago

        Reasonably sure i can set up local control through home assistant. Haven’t looked too hard but I’ve always liked the featuresets on the roombas and the Amazon connection was the reason I haven’t done too much investigation yet.

        • burrito@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          It’d be an easy battle. The last iRobot device I had was a fickle piece of junk that’d error out constantly or ignore virtual walls. I’m on my second Roborock vacuum now and am very impressed with how well they work. I gave my first one away and it’s still working great for the person I gave it to.

  • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.worldEnglish
    171·
    10 months ago

    Huh I thought it was done a long time ago. Looks like Roomba’s back on the menu, boys!

  • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
    184·
    10 months ago

    No Amazon does not terminate the deal, the EU did. Because otherwise Amazon will have too much power over the robot industry.

    • silverbax@lemmy.worldEnglish
      132·
      10 months ago

      And, Amazon didn’t want to give up the ‘mapping everyone’s home and tracking them’ concept.

    • ilmagico@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      Technically, no, iRobot and Amazon “mutually agreed” to terminate the deal, most likely cause the EU probably wasn’t going to approve, but:

      1. The EU was set to deliberate in mid Feb, so they didn’t (yet)
      2. It’s also possible that Amazon used the likely rejection of the EU as an excuse to back out of a deal they didn’t want anymore

      I don’t know which one it is, but if Amazon wanted to close, they would’ve been willing to make concessions to the EU to get their approval, rather than backing out.

  • BigMacHole@lemm.eeEnglish
    153·
    10 months ago

    It’s a good thing we gave Amazon Tax CUTS instead of RAISES! Otherwise they may have forced people to lose their jobs!

  • rusticus@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    10 months ago

    iRobot has rested on their laurels and patent portfolio for years while others (ie Roborock) have lapped their products. Looks like they’ll continue to decline into obscurity and count on patent troll lawsuits to survive. BTW, anyone want to buy a POS Roomba i7 that beats the hell out of furniture and baseboards while constantly getting jammed rollers?

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.eeEnglish
    35·
    10 months ago

    Why the fuck would you name your robotics company that?

    Ya know, when I named my Red Car “Christine” it was a joke and one for my own amusement, if it were a new model of car that I was selling there are a couple of reasons I wouldn’t have done that.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      Fyi: This is the company that makes roombas and thats the name people recognize. They where founded as irobot in the 90s and it was clearly copying apple.

      Its almost suprising they didnt sue the irobot movie for its title, being that the original titel by Isaac Asimov spelled it “i, robot”

      • judgejenkins@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        They where founded as irobot in the 90s and it was clearly copying apple.

        Are you saying the name iRobot is copying Apple? Because iRobot was founded almost 10 years before the first iMac.

        • webghost0101@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          Till apple didn’t stat the i- naming scheme till imac in 98.

          So irobot at the time really was an original name…